dancing upon the red sea
by lydiamaartin
Summary: There is something maddeningly beautiful about the way the world looks when it's falling down around you. - JamesDominique.


**disclaimer:** not mine.

**warning:** cousincest, second-person, no dialogue, etc. if it bothers you, don't read it.

**dedication:** HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAYE! I love you and I hope you like this!

* * *

There is something maddeningly beautiful about the way the world looks when it's falling down around you, oh, _tell me something I don't know_.

It is some tantalizing combination of the heartbreak and the dying stars and the broken breaths that keeps you coming back, here, the edge of the world poised upon a cliffside or a skyscraper or the roof of your childhood home by the ocean, ready to crash at the wrong blink, the wrong breath, the wrong kiss. All the world is watching, but all the world is burning, and can't they see, _can't they see_, the apocalypse was never going to be the work of make-believe gods on ivory thrones.

Only humans could cause such suffering, and so the cities behind your dreams flood and collapse and burn to the ground and heaven melts away like sunlight in the evening because it was never a paradise awaiting the best, only ever a silver lining in a cloud that's long since floated away. It can take decades of misery till humans lose such glorious hope, but you think the sound of his heartbeat matching your own might do the trick just as well.

-:-

Tragedy becomes you, says the world, dancing through your veins and through your bones, and the sky is burning blood on the day you don that beautiful black dress and everyone lines up to give you their condolences when the only thing you want from any of them is their absence, with one exception. Always one exception. The only person you'll touch as you sit in the cemetery and wait and wait. Always him.

Speeches are such a grandiose gesture for the dead, you think contemptuously even as your hand's grip on his grows dangerously tight throughout your mother's tears as she waxes poetic about her little sister's beauty and heart. After all, they're no longer here to hear it, and wouldn't it make more sense to tell them when they're alive? You never really know how long you have before a cruel accident, an incurable disease, or simply loneliness can snatch your loved ones away.

People know this, you realize, but they forget. They forget amid the blur of city lights and traffic horns, of being late for work and picking up morning coffee. Humans are forgetful, so passionate about all the wrong things at all the wrong times. He intertwines his fingers with yours and you wonder if your aunt in her silver coffin isn't the only tragedy taking place at the sea's side tonight. The sea has seen its fair share of tragedies already, but what's one more to add to the list? You don't think the two of you could ever top the wars, the blood, all the deaths the ocean has born witness to for millennia. But you can try.

Death has never scared you, but you close your eyes and hold your breath and pray to a god you don't believe in anyway. Life is short, but tragedies last forever, and his hand is terribly warm.

-:-

Your sister makes sure to ask if you want to speak before she walks up to give her own speech to the crowds assembled, and you do but you don't, so you stay silent and shake your head and hold his hand tighter. Victoire is an angel in the skylights, vanilla blonde and black satin and _such_ eloquence, society says, dabbing tears at the corner of its eyes as she speaks and enchants a kingdom falling apart at the seams.

You are no angel, and you sink under their scrutiny, like an anchor except tied to a ship that should never have sailed. To watch one sister is to watch the other, and everyone is waiting, breath bated, eyes piercing, to see how you will collapse beneath the weight of expectations. Everyone breaks, they are sure, because everyone has, every last one of them, except you. You're still standing, and the whole world is clamoring to know your secret.

If she is platinum, you must be gold, because that's just how the hierarchy of precious metals goes. That must be, they assume, the tragedy of you, always second-best to a girl that can turn dirt to diamonds and rule a kingdom with only the glitter of her smile, no prince needed. What they don't realize is that when the world says _tragedy becomes you_, it does not mean silly schoolgirl dramas and typical sibling rivalry. There is no inherent tragedy in the rhythm of life, no tragedy in missing a train or a drunk driver on the streets of Paris crashing into your aunt or growing up with a sister you could never hope to measure up to.

There is a difference between tragedy and life, and there lies your secret, because the way his fingers feel on your body, even through the summer-light chiffon of your dress, is not _life_. The greatest tragedy of all is love, and maybe all of history's poetry had the truth hidden beneath its words all along.

-:-

Winter is your favorite time of every year, so perhaps it is fitting that on the eve of your sister's summer wedding, he asks you to dance. Maybe you should have declined, but there is something about James that you can never refuse, and it's not like he doesn't know every corner of your soul already, so you take his hand and stand. You're not the queen, nor are you the princess, because these days, divinity does not decide royalty, but with the whole world stilling just to watch you on his arm, you feel less like a tragedy and more like a legend written in constellations.

(You were never too fond of Greek mythology, but writing stories in the stars was, you will admit, the most precious gift a civilization could give to the world.)

He spins you and dips you and twirls you around, and the crowds part like the Red Sea, as if the two of you could ever hope to be on the right side of history. What you are, in the moment, though, is _immortal_, and there's no sense letting anyone forget that, so you undo the crystal barrette in your curls and toss it carelessly onto the dance floor as he lifts you up to the sky like a sacrifice for the gods.

There is, of course, no god in all of mythology who would accept a gift like you, such a beautiful harbinger of the apocalypse. No one awaits the day of reckoning, after all, no one except you because maybe, just maybe, once the world has been burned to dust and the planet is nothing but oceans and stars chasing endlessly after each other, you can have your happy ending. (Hope, after all, is hard to lose.)

Until then, until the day it all comes crashing down, you laugh and you smile and you breathe, and the sky tastes like delight from up here. Your hair forms a halo around your face, as if you were anything close to an angel, and the crowds murmur in awe at how long James can hold you up there with just his hands. What they don't know, what they will never know, is that he can hold you forever, he _will_ hold you forever, because when time is so dangerously lost, forever is all you have – forever, and the feeling of flying.

-:-

You have to wonder what the two of you look like to the others as you dance, a symphony of the sunrise in his eyes and the apocalypse in yours. He drops you gently to the floor and swirls you around him, the lights dimming as your body molds to his in almost-perfection. Almost, because nothing about the two of you could ever be perfection, but it's nice to dream, sometimes, that you could someday reach the unattainable level of glory of Victoire and Teddy, of white silk dresses and black ties and diamond rings with engravings of the other's name.

The two of you are not Victoire and Teddy, and all the better for it, perhaps. It might be sweet to live a fairytale, but you rather think it would get boring after the second and a half kid and a decade of watching the same old stories unfold, as if humanity itself has run out of ways to love. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth that is inscribed everywhere, all across history, in Egyptian mythology and Shakespeare's plays, in the fall of the Roman Empire and the building of America. But how are they to know that?

You know this, as you know everything, from those languid winter nights scattered between his house and yours and the universe in between, the discussions around the fireplace about life and love and death, secrets whispered with stolen breaths for no one but the two of you to ever understand. The reason winter is your favorite month is because the rhythm of the snowflakes on the windows has always been the background music to your discoveries of the universe's hidden truths, the ones hidden in places where no one but you can ever find them, like in the moonlit scar on James' back and in the way he holds you when lightning crashes and in how he looks when he's waded out into the middle of the ocean for no reason except to make you smile.

You find them in the cadence of his heartbeat and in the way his breath catches when you touch his cheek. Everything is hidden here, between him and you and the skies beyond, all the great love stories, all the poetry, all the myths. The truth about tragedies, about prophecies, about love – if you can just map them across his veins, maybe there's a chance for absolution somewhere in this mess.

-:-

People forget, but you don't. You are fifteen when you decide you want to travel and twenty-one when he buys two tickets to Spain and leads you out into the garden the eve of your sister's wedding and offers them to you. Take whoever you want, he suggests with your favorite smile on his lips, as if there was any other option besides choosing him. A girl like you could never run away with anyone except the one boy who can hear the apocalypse pounding in your dreams and still love you for it.

The world spins on, madly and maddeningly, and it becomes hard to breathe as you run but nothing has ever felt so good as flying across the world on the wings of crossed stars. James holds you, and he loves you, and Spain is more beautiful than you ever imagined until you cross the line to France, to Belgium, to Germany. Europe unfolds like a galaxy of wonders before your eyes, and slowly, slowly, oh, slowly, the drumbeats of tragedy fade from behind your smile.

It is easy, too easy, to love James here, on the beaches of France and in the forests of Germany, in Greek cafés and in Roman temples, far away from the suffocating presence of your family. There are moments when you pause to wonder how Victoire and Teddy are doing, if Louis has settled on a girl or maybe a boy, and which of your cousins has caught the eye of Scorpius Malfoy or if he will perhaps stick to a pureblood. But moments of normalcy are nothing but a quick snapshot in a world of panoramas, and the thoughts dissolve like sugar on your tongue before you can even taste them.

You do wonder if they miss you, and, if they do, what is it they miss? It can't be your beauty, because Victoire has enough of that, and it can't be your smiles because only one person has seen your best, and it can't be all the things James loves about you, like your inability to stop laughing when he tickles you or how you like to drink peach tea every night before bed or the tattoo on your back, because nobody knows your secrets the way he does. Is there anything left, when you strip away the glamour and the quirks and the stars in your blood? Anything at all?

Russia beckons, though, so you stop thinking about home because you're pretty sure it's lost somewhere between Olympus and the Eiffel Tower, between ancient gods and the future, between your destruction and his. There was never much for you to love about Britain, except for him, always him, and the whole world claims you now, you with him and him with you.

-:-

The edge of the world is a house on the coast of Spain, where the sky kisses the hills until they bleed sunlight and the ocean carries ships that never sailed and everything is peaceful until you close your eyes and breathe.

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**a/n:** the product of a late saturday night and an early sunday morning. hope you guys liked it anyway! please review?

and **don't** favorite without reviewing, please and thank you.


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